


Coeur de Mon Frère

by Manon



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-12
Updated: 2012-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-01 20:38:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manon/pseuds/Manon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson's decision to wed Mary has already been made for him. All that is left for him to do is say goodbye to his oldest friend, who may not take the news as well as is to be hoped. Watson/Holmes</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coeur de Mon Frère

Sherlock Holmes is, by nature, a studious being. Watson knows this- has in fact come to revere it in some instances- as surely as he knows his own name. Why it never bothered him before is easy to say. It was often the saving grace of his life in many varied instances. When trouble beckons, Holmes' inquisitive mind springs to action, often aiding and abetting Watson in their mutual, if unofficial, fight against crime for all instances.

It should not have come as a surprise then for Holmes to learn of Mary. Watson did intend to first introduce the pair, slowly but surely build up, if not a camaraderie, than a mutual acquaintance between the two. In Watson's own mind, it would be the perfect situation to save his quickly burgeoning life of debauchery, of which Holmes played the foremost instigator. In all truth, Mary was what Watson needed; she was similar to Holmes in many ways, but infinitely more personal, more feminine. She was strong but not oppressive, attentive but not overwhelming, and warm in a way that Holmes could never be. She was his anchor, his soft, dependable, impossibly lovely young companion, one who made him feel both protective and safe. After a period, it only seemed necessary that Watson should marry the girl, if only for his own peace of mind.

Holmes had not taken the news well.

Watson knows, somewhere deep down, where the things about himself that half deserve his revulsion and half his awe were kept, that his relationship with Holmes, once a friendship, then a kind of brotherly companionship, and now something more, had changed. What he can't understand was when had it happened, when had what had once been his whole world suddenly reared its head and twisted and morphed into such an ugly, bestial thing. It had at once frightened him and drawn him closer than ever to his dearest friend, who had, almost at once, cooled to compensate for Watson's sudden warmth. Holmes didn't want to talk about it; he didn't want to acknowledge it. For all of his genius, for all of his foresight, it had never once occurred to him that the dynamic between the two of them, the one that, for six or so years, had ruled his entire life, could suddenly be disrupted, and by a woman, of all creatures. It was inconceivable, preposterous.

It was real.

Holmes doesn't revile the fairer sex; he doesn't begrudge them of their feminine charms or their effortless guile, the alluring shape of their figures or the soft, perfumed feel of their skin. To him they are creatures, much the same way a cat is a creature. He would ignore it and it would be content to ignore him and in their mutual ignorance, a kind of balance formed. It hadn't helped, once Watson had broken the news, that Irene Adler had returned for a visit and a favor. Watson had never understood Holmes' complex with such a woman as that; he was at once enthralled and repelled, curious and oh-so cautious. Watson only felt mild concern for his friend. Surely, he could take care of himself. Surely he would neither want nor require Watson's help in getting rid of such a pestilence as Adler was. In the meantime, Watson would devote himself to Mary, his beautiful bride. Mary had requested, once the two were married, that they move out of London and to the countryside, preferably Derbyshire, where her brother owned an estate. It would be a much better atmosphere for their children than London, she had said and Watson, wanting only what was best and recognizing the importance of such a decision, had agreed.

There was, however, a slight issue with his attempts to sever all ties and leave town forever.

The process of moving out was taking a much longer time than Watson had initially imagined it would. No sooner would he have cleared out his place of residence in 221b Baker Street and bidden his final farewell to the place then he would be back, having forgotten some final item that was essential to his doctorial practices, to his bride, to his life. At first, it had been a series of textbooks that he had discovered lodged into Holmes' bookshelf, resting soundly between a keg of dynamite powder and a wedge of old, moldy cheese. Next it had been a stethoscope and a number of bandage wraps he had had since his time in the war, which he had discovered in the den, the stethoscope wrapped around the dog and the bandages holding up the grotesque, half-rotted corpse of a dead weasel. Watson had not stayed to ask questions but had merely unbound the poor dead creature, disposed of its body in the trash, removed the stethoscope from around Gladstone's neck, and departed.

Throughout the weeks, Watson had returned far more often then he had wished, for socks and ties, for vests that had long since gone missing from his armoire that he now wanted returned. Almost all of these things were in Holmes' possession. Watson did not try to analyze why Holmes coveted his things, did not even give the notion a passing glance. To do so would be to admit that something unnatural existed between the two of them, and Watson had gone out of his way for six straight years to ignore any sort of mutual attachment. Besides, it was Holmes who had been pawning Watson's possessions for years; Watson merely used the situation as a means to return to Baker's Street whenever he could.

He hadn't known it then. Or perhaps he had, but had only wanted to skim the surface of such a truth. Watson wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to become aware of his intentions, not now and not ever. All he knew was that lately, in the darkest part of the night, he would awaken, Mary sleeping softly by his side, haunted by dreams of Holmes' stern, almost accusatory face, by his voice ringing inside of his head: _Farewell, Watson. A braver man than you could not have endured it, I'm sure._

Watson didn't want to look too closely at that part of his heart, his mind. He didn't want to see what he himself had written there. But slowly, a dark cloud seemed to travel to the forefront of his brain, particularly in times of Mary's endless company. It was a thought, however heartless, he knew to be true: She would not satisfy.

And he was beginning to grow bored.

That was when he had snapped into action. The wedding was moved up a month earlier than before, the arrangements were organized faster, the invitations sent out much quicker then had been expected. Watson was going to marry Mary. They were going to spend their lives together, for better or for worse. It had to be that way. Because, surely, the other option was too perverse a sentence for either of them to handle. A man may be a lover and two men together may be brothers, but the components should never mix, have never mixed, not ever in Watson's whole experience. There is an unconventionality and an absurdity about the situation that should never have been there, but now that it is, there is no way to ignore it. Holmes has never been a conventional man and a part of Watson hates him for it.

He decides finally that something must be done, or else they will either draw circles around each other for all eternity or kill one another. Watson, whatever may be said to the contrary, will freely admit that Holmes has always been his most trusted confident and closest friend and as such, deserves, more than anyone else he has ever associated with, a proper goodbye. It will serve a duel purpose, Watson reasons; he will be able to give a sincere farewell to his closest companion and, in doing so, be able to completely and utterly sever all ties between the two for now and forever.

It isn't pleasant. It isn't fair to either him or Holmes. But the duality of his devotion isn't fair to Mary either, the woman, he tells himself, he loves, the woman who will bear his children and take care of him when he is elderly and feeble. Holmes will never be able to do either and in that realization stems another decision: This will be the end.

Watson waits exactly eight days after making his decision to go pay Holmes a final visit. And on the eighth and final day, he goes.

* * *

The sitting room is quiet when he enters it. This is the first sign that something is amiss. Nothing is ever quiet in Holmes' place of work; things are always whirring, ticking, humming, threading a steady beat throughout the air and, more often than not, whistling piercingly and shrilly, as though being tortured. Watson half expects to see Holmes dead when he enters the room, strung up from the ceiling as he had when the debacle with Blackwood had finally come to an end. Rather, when he pushes the door open with no small amount of trepidation, he instead finds Holmes seated at his table, an empty glass vial in one hand, a sock in the other. Watson enters quietly, though not quietly enough to divert the attention of his friend. Holmes' head snaps up immediately at the sound of the door creaking shut. His dark hair is ruffled in typical disarray and his eyes are tired, dark circles lining the area underneath his lids. The quick, dark eyes take in the sight of Watson standing in the sitting room doorway, dressed in a coat, hat in hand, looking for all the world as though he will leave and never return. In every way, he will.

They watch each other for a moment more while the silence stretches on between them, unmarked even by Watson shuffling slightly in the doorway. Finally, Holmes raises the sock and the vial.

"Ah. Watson. I suppose you've come back for these?" he asks, making no effort to impart any sense of joviality into his voice. The effort would be wasted in any case; Watson can always tell what sort of mood Holmes is in, even when Holmes can't. It would be foolish, not to mention insulting, to hide such a thing from him.

Watson nods his head, using Holmes' assumption as an excuse, his eyes fixed on the sock and the vial as though they are the most fascinating things in the room. "Er, yes, of course. I expect it will be my last visit. Anything else I have left behind here I don't want."

They both pause after this sentence, each thinking of the real meaning behind Watson's words. Silence descends upon the room once more, thicker this time and heavier with meaning.

"I see," Holmes says finally, turning his head to examine the colored rays that the vial creates as it catches the light from the gas lamp sitting on the table. His attention seems diverted, though Watson knows he is merely playing for time, trying to think of something deleterious to say to their final parting, something that Watson will be sure to always keep in mind, as a token of their long friendship together. However, his normally witty tongue is dry. Nothing arises to his lips, nothing that will seem poignant and acerbic and forever etched in the recesses of Watson's mind as a parting gift from his oldest friend.

Instead, the brilliant detective drops his gaze from the vial and holds it and the sock out to Watson. Watson, however, does not start forward. He finds that he can't. In the silence, Holmes drops his hands to the table once more and shuffles the fabric of the sock with his thumb.

"I suppose you and Mary will be living in the country?" he says finally, and it does not escape Watson's attention that the name 'Mary' flees Holmes' lips like something that needs to be spit out and stamped on very quickly. However, Watson does not make any effort in salvaging the name, as he knows he should. In fact, he does not do any of the activities that he knows, deep in his heart, he should be doing: he does not simply cross the room, take the offered items back from Holmes, bid his oldest companion farewell, and leave, as would be expected of any two men in this kind of situation. He does not even try to defend Mary's name, lovely and defensible as it is. Instead, Watson shuffles awkwardly from foot to foot, hat clutched in one hand, and stares at Holmes from across the room.

"Yes," he says finally, in response to Holmes' question. "Yes, that is what we intend."

"So I see," Holmes replies. His gaze is still fixed on the vial. "And will you be making very many trips to London during your residency?"

"No, I don't believe so," he replies, the words more lenient than before. "Mary prefers the country, you see. She does not care for London much."

"Ah," Holmes says softly, but he might as well have shouted it for all the gravity the word seems to hold. Watson suppresses the urge to flinch, to stride across the room, wrench the objects from Holmes' unwilling fingers, and to be done with it. He tries to ignore how Holmes' lips twitched soundlessly as Watson spoke of remaining in the country and he tries to ignore how easily 'London' could have been replaced with 'Holmes' in the previous sentence. The whole thing makes him want to scream. They should not be acting like this. It goes against every code that society, that they themselves, have built up in the intervening years.

"Holmes," he says finally, his voice softer and much more tense then it has been before. Almost as if on cue, Holmes comes to life; his head remains inclined toward the table, his eyes glued on the wooden grains, and the objects are dropped onto the table with no regard as to their placement. All of these signals point to an unwillingness to talk, yet Watson is determined to have it out.

"Holmes, listen to me." Watson's voice is pleading. "You can not possibly think that this could have continued, did you?"

"I haven't the faintest clue what you're talking about, Watson," Holmes murmurs, but it is quiet enough for Watson to pretend not to hear.

"It was enough for a while, all right? What with the police cases every other Tuesday and the experimentation on my dog when the cases had stopped coming and your complete lack of regard for my sleep but, for God's sake Holmes, you cannot tell me you honestly never expected something like this to happen?"

"I would much appreciate it if you would specify what 'this' is exactly, as I am abnormally intelligent though not a mind-reader, Watson," Holmes mutters in response, his eyes still glued on the desk table, his fingers held still in the palm of each hand. Watson has the irresistible urge to cross the room and seize those hands, at least to make Holmes look at him, but he masters the urge, instead choosing to grip his hat with a little more force than before and grit his teeth as he begins to explain.

"'This', Holmes, as you well know, would be my marriage to Ma-"

"Ah, of course!" Holmes cuts in before Watson can finish, as though the mere sound of Mary's name could physically burn him. He has sat up straight in his chair and his hands lay flat against the table, as though to brace his body against the truth of what Watson is attempting to make him realize; his shoulders are stiffened and his jaw is set, not quite in anger, but with some sense of deep frustration and, perhaps, some sadness.

When he speaks, however, his voice is as acidic as ever. " _Your bride,_ of course, would be the only creature in the whole of England to convince you to leave London for the bloody countryside, wouldn't she? And, of course, never mind that I myself have made the very same suggestion to you numerous times before, or that my own brother owns an estate in the countryside, just like  _your bride._  I suppose when the suggestion comes from  _me,_ it carries little to no meaning. Is that right, Watson?"

Watson gapes at him for a minute, his mind trying to register what Holmes is telling him, even while his heart sets up defenses against his words. Finally, he manages to un-stick his jaw and force words out through his slack mouth.

"Holmes, what-? Of course the situation is different, how could you believe it isn't?" Watson says incredulously, using his shock to mask the feeling of panic that is slowly rising up inside of him. Holmes is giving voice to everything he himself has tried to ignore for six long years.

"How so?" Holmes asks, whipping his head around to face Watson, his fingers now curling in upon themselves in anger.

Watson sighs in exasperation, his hands falling limply to his sides as he makes some gesture of indeterminate frustration. "It's different in every respect, Holmes. I shouldn't even have to explain it to you! Mary is my fiancé and as such she takes a greater priority. You must understand, Holmes, you're-"

"What? Your coworker? Your friend? Or perhaps your brother?" Holmes asks, his face darker and angrier than before. His fingers are now tapping an agitated rhythm against the desk, keeping in time, somehow, with the erratic beating of Watson's own heart. "I would have thought a companion of that magnitude would have kept equal, if not greater, priority and influence over you than a mere woman you intend to marry after only a year's acquaintance. How suddenly do the tables turn, am I right, Watson?"

"Holmes!" Watson says sharply, his voice firm but tinged with some dangerous note, rarely heard but an undeniable warning of the anger to come. Holmes however, out of some sense of recklessness or perhaps simply out of ignorance, carries on as though he has not heard a thing. Holmes rarely works himself into a tirade; he is much too reserved a person to ever want, or to ever be able, to allow his emotions to explode in a burst of spontaneous compassion or anger. This, Watson has learned, is simply another absurdity concerning Holmes' particular comportment; at one minute, reserved and sarcastic, caustic even, and then in another, excited, boisterous, passionately consumed with his love for invention, for mystery, for science and for the ever-present problem of the human mind. This kind of ranting and raving has only happened once before, when Watson told Holmes the truth about himself and Mary. He hadn't known how to deal with Holmes' reaction then and perhaps he should have given the concept better thought afterward, but now it is too late and nothing will stop him once he has started to release all of his pent-up emotions.

"You would never have given a thought to refuse when the suggestion had come from  _Mary._  That would have been inconceivable even to you, Watson, a more stubborn person of whom I have never known. What is it about  _her_  that causes such a change in you, Watson? Is it some kind of minx quality that she uses over you? Perhaps she picked it up from her last husband, dearly departed soul that he is. Or even perhaps she procured this skill in a brothel at one point in her no-doubt illustrious career of wedding and duping countless men!"

"Holmes!" Watson shouts, a kind of fury arising inside of himself that he hadn't known existed until this moment. His hands, now curled into fists, are clutching his hat so strongly that the rim will be bent afterward, his ears ringing with the heat of his anger. Revulsion curls up inside himself towards Holmes, for the first time in their entire relationship. It has never come down to this before, to blind, sickening hatred, so strong within himself that it is close to, very nearly the same as, love. "This is my fiancé you are talking about! How dare you insult her in these matters when you have never even had the common  _decency_  to share one word of welcome with her?"

"Why should I have?" Holmes snaps, standing up so quickly that the chair is forced away from the desk and teeters unstably upon two legs before crashing to the floor. He whirls to face Watson, his hair wilder and more tangled than ever, his eyes hard and cold and heated all at once. "What right did she have to enter into  _my_  life? What license was she given to break apart  _our_  arrangement?"

"You're being nonsensical, Holmes," Watson replies coldly, trying to keep a tight rein over his rapidly spiraling anger. "Think about what you are saying for once."

"And you! How could you have let her do it, you spineless, bloody-

"Because it was the right thing to do!" Watson says back, his voice tight with anger. "Because it was what  _I_  wanted, Holmes! It was never a question of Mary forcing entry into our lives, I welcomed her in!"

"What right did you-?" Holmes begins.

"I had every right to do so!" Watson shouts, finally losing the tight control he has kept reign on over his anger since Holmes first began this argument. He feels incensed, incomprehensively hurt and betrayed by Holmes' words, the feelings his oldest friend has kept from him all this time and the fact that, in a deep part of his mind, the part that he never inspects too closely, he needs to hear these things almost as much as Holmes needs to say them. They are things he himself has never been able to say. They are, in some respects, true. "It isn't just about you, Holmes, or the components of my own life that do not agree with yours! You have absolutely no share it! I fell in love with Mary and welcomed her in because it was what  _I_  wanted!"

"But it wasn't what  _I_  wanted!" Holmes yells back, a note in his voice breaking. "Because  _I_  was content to spend the rest of my time with you as my only confidant, even if that meant having to put up with all of your ridiculous compulsions and rules and bloody nitpicking about what I do and how I do it! Did you ever once stop to think about how such an arrival as was Mary's would affect me and my life?"

"How can you be so selfish, Holmes, when I could say the very same thing about you?" Watson says. "When have I ever mentioned your impertinence concerning your practice of requiring my assistance whenever you accept a new case or when you borrow my things to use in some new bloody experiment? And what of Adler, Holmes? Have you ever given a consideration as to the contempt I have always held for her?

Something in Holmes' face seals itself off, tight and closed. "Do not bring Adler's name into this," he says, his voice dark and angry.

Watson feels a surge of black, putrid fury, a revulsion that stems not only from Holmes' obstinately closed-minded assessments but from his own twisted emotions, from the feelings and desires he has denied himself for too long. He knows that they should not exist, knows, intuitively in some ways, that they will never leave him. It makes him furious to think that he can possess feelings such as this and in his rage, he can direct that anger towards Holmes, the source of all of his problems. He came here simply to say goodbye and has now worked himself into a tighter corner than ever he has been in before. In this moment, it is just himself and Holmes, locked in combat, waiting for the other to make the first move.

"What could you have expected?" he asks at last, staring at Holmes' darkened frame from across the room. "How long did you possibly think this could have gone on? Did you think we could have withstood it another ten years? Twenty? Thirty? Did you expect us to spend the rest of our lives together, growing old and arguing just as if we were married?" He forces the word out through a throat constricted by emotion. "Did you ever once hear of something so absurd? You were never so naïve before Holmes, I can't imagine why you would begin to be so now."

"I never imagined such a thing," Holmes bites out. His face is contorted, twisted by an emotion too convoluted and difficult to express. "I never expressed any such wish."

"But you expected it to happen," Watson states, forcing himself to continue. "You never imagined a scenario in which I wouldn't wish for exactly the same thing as you, did you? That I could wish to spend the rest of my life with a person other than yourself."

"If I never gave mention that I would like to see you as my constant companion for the remainder of both our lives," Holmes says, his voice low but nonetheless carried across the room by the silence. "then I have obviously never possessed such a wish."

The farewell he has spent so much time worrying about has been forgotten in the tirade of words that have spilled out since his arrival at 221b Baker Street for the last time. Something has broken between the two of them, some unspoken balance of their emotions and what they know to be true has melded together in this night and come spilling out into the open. Watson doesn't know what to think anymore; whether he has always known about this complex between himself and Holmes or whether he has always been unfaithful, in mind if not in body, to Mary. But his blood is pounding loudly in his ears and Holmes is staring at him from across the room, his eyes dark and angry and hurt, his hair disheveled and his hands twisting to and fro in front of his waist, as though itching to hit Watson with them, or hold him, he doesn't know which. They aren't, Watson realizes, arguing about Mary anymore; he doesn't know what they are arguing about, only that it hurts them both and doesn't clarify anything. They are scared and angry and hurt by the other, and so, so confused that they don't know how to work the situation out for themselves, only that they are in love and have no way to accept it. Watson is set to marry Mary and Holmes will not accept the fact until after it becomes reality. In one moment, Watson then understands what the problem is.

He moves without thinking.

A soft  _thump_  sounds throughout the room as Watson's hands, limp with the shock of his sudden realization, drop his hat on the dirty wooden floor. In three strides, he crosses the room until he is standing directly in front of Holmes. The air between them is more different and more charged then ever it has been before; Watson is electrically aware of the way Holmes' hands lay limply at his sides and the way his eyes dart between both of Watson's own, as though hoping to read his mind. He wonders, briefly, whether this is how Holmes feels all the time. He doesn't have much time to consider the matter however as, in a matter of seconds, his body acts of its own accord and he leans forward just a bit to press his lips against Holmes' while his hands grip his shoulders with a force he has only ever used before in a fight.

This kiss is vastly different then anything he has ever experienced before with any member of the female specimen. The simple fact is that kissing Holmes is not the same, not  _nearly_ the same, as kissing Mary. Mary's lips are soft and sweet, her skin velvety and smooth, her hands limp and delicate. Holmes' chin is covered in day-long stubble, scratchy and rough against Watson's cheek; his hands are gripping Watson's upper arms with an iron strength and his lips are moist and warm, their kiss masculine and sharp, full of teeth and aggression, more like a fight than a show of expression. And yet, despite its indelicacy, Watson feels very warm and very still, focused on nothing more than the movement of their mouths together, the way their noses bump into each other and where Holmes' hands are roving clumsily while his own hands remain frozen on his shoulders.

They could have continued forever, Watson believes, frozen in the moment of their final, complete goodbye, if only they were inhuman and didn't require the need to breathe. He can feel Holmes twist away from him slightly, his lips still glued to Watson's but his hands, which have now somehow wound their way into his hair, tugging a little, as though in protest at a lack of oxygen. Finally, Watson moves his head to the side, breaking their kiss, and his hands shift around on Holmes' shoulders. They stand facing each other for a moment, their eyes still locked onto each other; Watson can feel one of Holmes' hands, still resting on his upper arm, twitch slightly, and the feeling is warm and strange and filled with meaning.

The air around them is still and quiet, but it is a different kind of silence. It is calm, in a sense, and surprised and satisfied and, above all, sad. There are no longer any words that can be shared between them; everything has been said, even the things that they never meant to bring out into the open and the things that they never realized needed to be said. In some ways Watson wishes he could swallow all of his words back to the cool recess of his mind, where only  _he_  would be able to chance a peek at them. But now it is too late and Holmes is watching him with eyes wide and surprised and just slightly darkened with a wonder that goes beyond plain questioning.

Slowly, Watson begins to pull away. His hands move first, sliding off of Holmes' shoulders with an exaggerated, almost unwanted hesitancy, as though he is afraid, or wishful, of Holmes grabbing them at the last second. He doesn't, however, and so Watson continues to move, collecting bits of himself that have molded to Holmes in the last minute or so and returning them to his own body where, he knows, they belong. Holmes follows suit almost automatically; his fingers graze Watson's wrists as they leave his arms and then they are still, hanging at his sides like useless limbs on a dead tree. Their faces move with the same sluggish movements; pulled back into their respective shells, their eyes closed, waiting for the minute when one of them pulls back in. It doesn't happen.

Instead, as Watson takes a step away from Holmes and opens his eyes, his oldest friend is staring at him from the short divide between them, his face open to any of Watson's advances, his eyes shining with an anticipation Watson can barely stand to see. He wants to pull back in; he wants to seize Holmes' head with his hands and run his fingers through that dark, unkempt hair; he wants to press his lips to Holmes' again, to taste him again, to press his cheek against his own and savor the feel of their skin together, of the warmth they create. And then, unbidden, an image of Mary, pure and white, comes rising to the surface of his mind and a wave of regret washes over Watson. He takes another step back, closes his eyes, and breathes. When he opens them, Holmes is still watching him from a mere distance of two feet, his face still and alert and very open. He wants to say something, wants to tell Holmes how it was just a mistake and he only meant to say goodbye… but the words are somehow caught up in his throat, and he looks away. When he looks back, Holmes' face has closed itself off, as though he is a puppy begging for a consolidating pat on the head and has just been beaten with the paper instead.

Watson takes another step back, opens his mouth to say something, and then closes it, unsure, or perhaps unaware, of why he has just done so. There is nothing left to say, nothing left that can mend this tremendous divide between them, the gap rent apart by years of ignoring their mutual feelings out of some sense of reckless propriety and then somehow discovering the actions to communicate in the thirteenth hour. They have no time left, and Watson is almost glad.

Almost, until he looks back at Holmes' face and catches sight of the agony etched deep into the lines around his eyes and mouth.

He turns around abruptly, snatches his hat up from the ground where he dropped it before, and then walks the remaining steps to the door at as brisk a pace as he dares. Just as his hand reaches the knob, Holmes' voice is carried to his ears.

"Watson."

He pauses for only a second, shoulders tensed, waiting, almost dreading, and at the same time hoping, to hear the rest. But it doesn't come. So he turns the knob using a wrist still tingling slightly with the feel of Holmes' fingers at its back and opens the door, musty and creaky in the silence of their room. Just before he steps through the door, he pauses, and the words ride out of their own accord, as if they have been fighting to escape all this time.

"Farewell, Holmes."

Then, before he can wait to hear Holmes' reply, if there is one, he steps through the door, down the hallway, out the entrance of 221b Baker Street, and down the dreary London road, back to Mary once and for all.

Back in the den of 221b, Holmes stands staring after the door, long after the figure resting just within its contours has disappeared. The sounds from the outside world fight to break through the windows, but the silence in the room douses them like a flood over a feeble candle. He stands for a moment longer, than turns as if he is going to sink into the desk chair behind him before remembering that he knocked it down earlier in their argument. He turns around then, as though lost, and stares out the grimy window behind him before lowering his gaze to the two objects on the desktop.

Slowly, fingers numb and thick with clumsiness, he picks up the glass vial and sock Watson left behind, the only remnants of their acquaintance that remain. His fingers slowly traverse the threads, the smooth surface, studying the small hole near the big toe and the tiny chip near the lip of the vial. And through out it all, his brilliant mind can only wonder why.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written quite a while ago, waay back when I'd just been getting into the whole Sherlock Holmes fandom. I'm actually not even that much of a shipper for Holmes/Watson anymore either, but I posted it anyway in the hope that someone might like it. In any case, thanks for reading.


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